Looking into purchasing my first backhoe, been researching/watching local for sale for about 6 months now. I run a farm and need to remove a lot of trees, trench and lay new waterlines/french drains, build 2 barns, and change the layout of the land a bit. I've been doing what I can with a 90hp DX90 tractor but no FEL and limited into what I can do with it. Im leaning towards a Case 580k or SK (preferably with a cab that I could upgrade with AC) as they seem to be a little cheaper then JD and their parts sound to be easier and cheaper to acquire (farm tractor I have to import a decent amount of parts from England whenever anything breaks and I hate it) 2 things Ive determined I really have to have on it are 4x4 due to the way the land is and how boggy it can be in places. And an extendahoe for working trees and doing a lot of trenching. The other upgrade Id like would be a 4-1 FEL bucket so I could use it to level driveways and create a new road and also grab logs for milling. Any thoughts or inputs from people with a lot more XP on the matter then me? Also would it be better to buy a backhoe without a 4-1 and try and upgrade it or is that a pain to do/costly? I found a Ford 555c for sale in my pricerange with all the accessories I wanted but Im not familiar with 555Cs in much of any way. Thoughts? heres a picture of it
I've got a 545d bought it 20-25 years ago and it's been pretty much bulletproof so far
upgrading to a 4 in 1 can be expensive. Remember its not only the bucket but the plumbing too.
Ah I was afraid of that, I know with my DX90 tractor it would be like 4-5k to get a FEL put on it, and then like another 1-1.5k for the plumbing and controls if I remember right which is more then 50% of the value of the machine. I saw a 580 that was 4x4 but missing the front driveshaft... guessing thats not a fun or cheap fix
i added a 4in1 to my machine 580c and I was looking at around 2 to 3k with the plumbing. Took me about a year to find the bucket. lol
Oh fun, yeah when I was researching it I couldnt find much info and finding an actual bucket was even harder, and the ones I did find were like 4-5k
That looks great if the mechanical condition is as good as the cosmetic condition. Definitely don't get a backhoe with the plan to add a 4 in 1 bucket. The bucket, 4wd, and extenda hoe all sound good, but are you serious? You're upgrading from a tractor with no loader and insist you need an extenda hoe??? how deep are you planning to trench? you know the boom goes down as well as the stick, right. That Ford could be what you're looking for, but if not, then I'd put more value on as good of condition as you can find within your price range leaving some left over for what it's really going to cost you.
Based on the paint condition inside the buckets I'd bet that ford repainted recently for sale, also the fact that a decent amount of the hydro lines are yellow and not black so the overall paint job/cosmetic look could be deceiving of its actual life. The overall condition of the body and hours are more important to me then whats on it, already had someone try and sell me a case that had everything I wanted but was high hours and a good amount of it was damaged. Also not upgrading, the other tractor is my main workhorse so adding another to the workforce, although a FEL is an upgrade I could really use for processing cattle. I need to cross some steams with trenches/lines and work on installing a lot of french drains in ground thats boggy enough to sink my other tractor 3 feet down just driving over it. Several contacts of mine who worked construction said that for what my needs look like I should aim for a machine with an extenda, and if able to 4x4 and 4-1 would be advantageous but not as helpful with work time as an extenda. Also the fact that I'd be using it to move materials for building barn the extra 4ish feet grab sounds handy. But I do understand cramming all those upgrades into the machine can really drive the price up or push you towards a machine with issues that could cause you to regret buying when your machine starts falling apart cause you were to excited to look past the extras
Ford were very good backhoes. That one looks to be a side shift which isn't common but looks like a pretty clean machine. Could just be a nice paint job though. 4 wheel drive is nice but if have soft ground, it can just get you stuck worse. The hoe on back puts a lot of weight on the rear wheels.
The 4-1 bucket is probably the first upgrade option I may end up not having though. The logic behind looking for one was a few, I currently have 1/4 mile of gravel drive that when we get flash flooding likes to get nasty ruts in so repairing that and also making more road as I need to add about another 1/4 mile of driveways. And the other was for processing/grabbing logs for milling and stacking. As is Ive been moving trees and cut logs with chain and tongs which is really a pain to get stacked in any proper form so the ability to actually pick them up was very interesting to me
yeah it is a sideshift, the person had 2 backhoes for sale, case and a ford but he sold the case the day I found him, both of them had the vertical stablizers, 4x4,4-1, and extend on them and they both had new paintjobs. The case I picked up on the paintjob faster due to the decals being knockoffs so they looked close but were off and the closer I looked the more I could tell it was fresh paint
here you can see even the teeth still have paint on them so its not been used much since paint and in this one based off the shine on the wheels he used armor-all on the wheels so he doesnt mind making his machine look nice for selling it. The way the land is its semi hilly and in the valley in the middle is were the ground gets boggy due to banks that catch the water before it can drain into the stream so my hope is the dig into the boggy without getting into it to install drains. As is due to water flow below the surface I have sinkholes that can be up to over a foot deep show up now and again
Are there forks for the FEL ? Seems to be set up for them. A thumb on the backhoe is extremely useful too.
The guy selling it so cheap he only bought Case paint......The Ford should be yellow. The ever popular 5 gallon overhall. Ed
No forks (the case he had had forks installed go figure) but I found several forks that I could mount that are the folding ones. And if not then I'll just acquire bolt/clamp on because I have pallets delivered semi decently and currently have to pay for a lift gate so the forks would pay for themselves pretty fast. Ed, lol I thought the color scheme looked off for what I had seen Fords lol, also from what I remember the FORD decal on the boom is normally suppose to be reversed, in that its a black background with yellow lettering
If the ground is boggy enough that your tractor sinks in 3' ruts over it, I don't think the 4x4 is going to help drive the backhoe over it. You may need something with lower ground pressure/ tracks. That backhoe will be much heavier than your tractor, and will sink much faster.
I did think of that but I dont have the money to buy a tracked vehicle just for that operation, but most backhoes weight 5-7k lb more then my DX depending on what I have on the tail. Basically a bit of the land is boggy but dry enough to drive over it if you have 4x4 or your going fast (how I get the other tractor over it now lol) You can see here were that "swamp" grass grows thats tall that animals hate to eat and right passed it were its short is were the ridge starts.But right before the stream there is a small ridge line that goes the whole way of the property which 'holds' the water in the boggy places so one of my first projects will be to bust through the ridgeline and install french drains to drain the land. I had a commercial irrigation/plumbing company come out and look at the land and thats what they suggested for doing but their price was nearly half of that of a backhoe so I figured the money would be better invested in a machine that I have a lot of uses for. There must be rock at the bottom of the mud about 3ft down cause thats how far I sank before I got traction again and drove out under my own power. So my thought was 4x4 to make sure I got to were I needed to, and the extendahoe to be able to dig were I needed to without having to get into it
My backhoe doesn't have 4x4, but I am thinking the other guys are right, it may not help too much. My 480c is 2wd, and the front tires barely have any weight on them unless I have something in the bucket. It seems to me the 4x4 would help steering the tractor, pulling the frontend around in the direction you want to go. Mine just slides the tires when I try to turn going up a hill and I have to use the individual brakes to bring it around.
Owning a backhoe on a farm, usually it's easiest to solve the drainage issues when their not at their worst. I don't see any cattails there, it could be much worse. A backhoe can cross stuff that will sink tracked machines by using the front bucket and backhoe to move. 4x4 is for overloading the loader bucket, or using the loader in marginal conditions, which is the least efficient way to use a backhoe. If you're digging trenches aren't you going to want to be inline with the trench? The extendahoe won't do anything to keep you out of the mess in that case.
I thought that 4wd was mainly to help load the front bucket, when you start transferring all the weight onto the front that way.
Yeah after hearing all the input and looking up hoe 4x4 it sounds like that is used for helping out with a loaded front loader and efficiency of the machine, not so much traversing negative terrain
Exactly- There isn't enough weight on the front to have any problems needing 4x4- until you load the bucket. A loaded bucket on a 4x2 machine will bog up in the mud quickly. Been there, done that. FWIW- You just don't see a lot of extenda hoe and/or 4n1 buckets around here. I found a 4x4 with the hang on forks 9hooks on top of bucket, just scoop them up to use them) and have been very happy with it on farm life. And frankly on the farm- I have a cab, would just as soon have open station. Frankly- once I got a decent sized skid steer with a few attachments, other than pure digging, my backhoe sits all the time.
What is the extenda hoe good for? Since I am just starting to use a backhoe, I thought it would be great to use to scrape along shaving just a couple inches of dirt up, but I was reading the manual on mine(I don't have the extenda hoe option though) and they say don't use it for that, it's not made for it and it will wear it out prematurely.
Check out my case videos on youtube. I tend to use the extendahoe a lot and dont know what Id do with out it. my youtube is MRGIOVANNIX12